Orlak nodded. “They do not fight together, they do not occupy towns together, but they have ceased hostility and have divided the land between them. In Kahrsaam they have formed a council to govern the country, and to deal with the Altan. The council is called the Sons of the Dead, for only death and the Lake of the Dead are shared between Lorn and the Conil Nachta. But the truce works well, and the promise of conquest is so great that their home quarrels have been forgotten.”
“Why has M’rystal not come ashore between the ports? Why does he not fight for his land?”
Orlak smiled with a shake of his head. In his eyes there was something approaching pain. “The head of council, a Sorcerer who has master minded this conquest, has sent word to him that if he throws down his arms and returns in peace, then all his troops and people will be allowed to live: he has added the proviso that M’rystal himself must agree to being executed. At the same time this Sorcerer has told everyone in the Altanate that if we co-operate and live in peace with the new invader, our countrymen, at present barred from entry by the blockade, will be allowed back in. There are thousands of lives and families at stake. None will fight for honour and country. They want peace, and the return of those they love.”
Moonshadow shook his head. “I still fail to understand why M’rystal does not invade the exposed territories in the south, the homelands of the invader.”
Orlak laughed. “A desert, and a thousand scattered tribes, on the move, hard to find! The lands around the Lake of the Dead are not like these lands here. There are no towns, no cities…no great cities. The coastal strongholds of the Lorn could hold off a siege for a hundred years, and though they may be isolated, M’rystal will hold on shifting sands and vanishing oases. He knows there will be no sense in that. He must win back the Altanate by force, or not at all.”
“And while the Council of the Dead holds the power of life and death over the families of those trapped on M’rystal’s fleet, the Altan has not even the power to fight. His men will not fight.” Raven spoke quietly, thoughtfully.
Moonshadow shook his head. “It seems insanity to me that this M’rystal would even have left his kingdom undefended.”
“He is not at war,” said Orlak. “Why should he have expected what happened? Only Lifebane was a threat and he has not the men to invade a whole country.”
“Imprudent, perhaps—insane, nonetheless,” said Moonshadow sombrely.
Raven saw how intense were the warrior’s eyes. In the bright lamplight his face seemed alive as if the muscles beneath the translucent skin worked and flexed in some concerted effort to escape from the man. And yet Moonshadow was not tense, merely solemn, mysterious. His grey eyes settled on Orlak as the tavern keeper described, for Raven, the familiar figures of Belthis and Donwayne. Raven had asked of the men who led the Council of the Dead. When Orlak finished, Moonshadow exhaled quietly, let his gaze drop to his hands, spread on the table. He moved his hands so that Raven could see what one of them concealed, and there lay the spider emerald, slowly unfurling to reveal its legs and hideous trembling body.
“The Crugoan,” he said. “I come close to finding him. I was right to go with this Raven.”
“Which of them is the being you seek?” asked Raven, drawing the man’s attention from the green creature before him. Moonshadow looked up at her, his moon-white hair falling across his brow.
“Which is the most powerful of them?” he asked.
“In their own ways each is powerful. Donwayne in body, Belthis in mind—both are powerful in their desire for conquest. Belthis more so, perhaps. He is a dark magician, from Kharwhan I am sure. An outcast. His magic powers are also very great, but perhaps no greater than Spellbinder’s.”
Moonshadow licked his lips and closed his hand around the spider again. “Spellbinder has truly been lucky. The Crugoan selects from among the most powerful of men to make his concealment in whatever world he runs to. It might as soon have been our friend, as your enemy.”
“But which one?”
Moonshadow did not respond. There was silence, then, until Orlak rose and called for help to make up beds for his three guests. Raven went willingly to the fur-lined pallet, and lay back on the thick blanket, staring at the dark rafters above her head. Moonshadow too seemed glad of rest. Beyond the clouds the moon was waning fast and soon he would again pass into his almost tenuous phase, weak, ill and frightening to regard.
Before they slept Raven reached out to him and disturbed him. He propped himself up on the bed and stared at her, perhaps looking at her as a woman for the first time. Karmana grunted as she settled into sleep across the room from them, her backside in the air, covered by a thin sheet of hand-woven cloth.
Moonshadow said, “You are more than just a warrior leader, Raven.”
Misunderstanding him Raven said, “I am a woman, true; and sometimes that is more important to me than being a warrior.” Her smile was shy, her look searching as Moonshadow considered her words.
“More than just a woman warrior on a hostile, fragmented world. You seem…you seem central. I find it difficult to explain.”
Raven laughed, and yet he was amazed that the man had perceived so much. “I myself cannot explain it, so let it rest. In any event, the concerns of this world will soon be beyond you.”
Moonshadow sighed. He lay back and slowly unbuttoned his leather jerkin, reached a hand under the shirt to scratch his chest. “I long for that. I long for the freedom to return whence I came. A long way away…a long time ago…”
“Beyond Quwhon, even.”
“Aye,” he chuckled at some private joke. “Even beyond Quwhon. There are many worlds, Raven, many thousands of worlds that sleep quietly or not so quietly beneath the basking light of the full moon. It is not distance that separates them, nor yet time. It is something indefinable, unimaginable. Where we lie now, in my world there is a great city, hugging the edge of a cliff ten times taller, even, than those cliffs at Kragg. In another world, this place is desert, and in another, a crystal lagoon, dead and dry, the salt gems growing as great forests of gleaming colour from the basin. I have fled through all these worlds in pursuit of my tormentor. Of all the worlds this has proved the most…stimulating.” He turned to stare sideways at Raven. “My strength wanes, and when it returns I may not be here long enough to know you. There are but a few days to the moment when I fail on you, and when I re-emerge, strong again, I shall go straight for the Crugoan, and finish him once and for all. For this moment, Raven, my desires have less to do with revenge than with…you.”
For the first time there was colour in Moonshadow’s face; the lantern was dim, and the shadows it cast were dark and jagged, but even in this frail light Raven could see that her fright flushed bright with desire, and perhaps awkwardness. For herself, she felt greatly roused by this lean man of moonsteel.
But she was still intrigued by him, wanted to know more of his past and why he would not reveal the host in which the Crugoan was hiding.
“What has this Crugoan done to you? Why do you pursue him?”
For a long while Moonshadow said nothing, just lay, propped on his elbow, watching the girl. Raven grew hot in the silence, not knowing whether to break it with a laugh, or wait until Moonshadow spoke, even if it was to tell her that he could say nothing. At last, however, his eyes dropped and his brow furrowed. He said, “It is my tormenter. The Crugoan is a powerful Sorcerer, a demon, rooted in no world, but prepared to help worlds in exchange for certain powers. It is, itself, merely the pawn of creatures far more powerful than even your Spellbinder or these ghost priests of Kharwhan who seem to weave the structure of your world, Raven.”
He knew even more than she had suspected!
He went on, “In my world I was the high born first son of a great war-lord. As all such I was protected from death by ancient traditions that not even the RuneLords could break or go against. But they desperately needed to rid themselves of me, for they knew that when I came to power I would have to rid myself of them. Unable to kill me
they summoned a Crugoan.”
“There are more than one?”
“Aye…many more than one. The Crugoan had access to a certain realm that was denied the RuneLords. The Moon itself. At their bidding it has trapped by body there, in a deep prison, immobile, frozen, just the mind alive. What you see, this substantial flesh before you, is a ghost of sorts, made real with the help of those I have passed on my way, pursuing the Crugoan. It never bargained on my spirit escaping the tomb, nor on that spirit achieving substance, even though that substance is transient and wanes, as you have seen, when the moon wanes, stifling my life force for a while. But I sit up there, Raven, helpless in one sense, watching my spirit seek release from this terrible curse.”
Raven shivered at the thought. She opened her palm and cupped the fingers to suggest the jewel he carried. “Your scary friend can destroy the Crugoan?”
“A single bite, to empty the poison sacs in its fangs, and when the Crugoan is destroyed, so the spell will break and I shall become as real as when the curse was placed upon me.”
“You seem real enough to me,” said Raven softly. She felt good for the bath she had taken early; she felt sweet for the primitive but sensuous oils and perfumes that Orlak had found for her to use. She felt good for her hair being combed through until it was soft to the touch. Only her rough tunic and sword belt jarred, felt cold and hostile in this moment of warmth. She swung her long legs from the pallet and rose to her feet, unfastening the sleeve shield from her arm and the belt from her waist. Moonshadow looked up at her, watching as she slipped her clothes from her body, then swept back her hair so he might see her in the flattering light, a smooth, lean woman, her breasts high and full, her jawline strong and attractive.
Moonshadow sat up and reached for Raven, pulled her to him and she closed her eyes as his touch wandered and explored her. She shivered as his fingers pressed the stiff tips of her breasts, and then she smiled as his lips, slightly cold, but very welcome, followed his touch.
He drew back from her body, looked up as his hands rested on her haunches. “In battle,” he said, “you are as wild and as frightening as twenty Lorn warriors. And yet now, naked, wanting me, you are soft and inviting and it is hard to remember how violent you have been. You are, in truth, a woman of strange contradictions. Even your name—Raven, the dark one, and yet your hair is gold and your skin as fair as honey.”
“Poets,” said Raven softly, pushing the man back across the bed, “spend too long talking and not enough time loving.”
She eased his clothes from him, and ran her hands across his body before stretching herself across his lean frame. Her kiss was lingering while his hands explored her, running lightly across her skin so that she seemed to writhe above him. Her hair fell forward, concealing their faces in a cage of yellow gold.
When she slipped down his body, her lips kissing, her tongue darting, it was Moonshadow’s turn to shiver. His fists clenched, and his eyes closed, as she took his shaft between gentle fingers and drew it to her. “A man’s beauty,” she said, “lies not in his size but in his strength. You seem strong, Moonshadow.”
“It is not the strength of a man’s weapon,” he said, “that gives a man success, but the deftness with which he wields it.”
She giggled, abandoned her caress to come and lie beside him, stretching across the bed, pulling his tautly muscled body on to her. The edge of the bed was hard beneath her rump and when he drove into her, too hard at first, easing, then gentle, then more powerful until he sensed that it was right for her, the wooden frame of the pallet became all the support there was for her; she felt herself stretched across a bar, vulnerable and open to the man who made love to her. His fingers lingered on her nipples while his legs moved against hers until she wrapped herself around him, locking their bodies together so that they threshed as one, and the sweat poured, as it were, from a single body.
Even before dawn they woke to the raucous crying of a bird, outside the small tavern.
“The bird,” cried Raven, and leapt from beneath her fur blanket. She slipped on her clothes, glanced quickly at Moonshadow as he too rolled out of the night’s comfort, then ran to the door.
It was pitch dark outside, with a heavy cloud covering preventing even starlight from illuminating the black shape that hovered there. And yet they could see it, wings spread, beating so fast that the air whirled around them, hair and clothes whipping across their flesh. The great bird’s eyes glowed with some inner light, and Raven sensed she could see its curved beak open and wet as its cried turned to insistent demands to follow.
It winged up and away into the night. Moonshadow guessed at once that they were being called back to the coast. Karmana came running out of the house, clothed, armed and disheveled.
“We return,” said Raven. “Spellbinder has called us back.”
She spoke no more, then, until they had slipped down the sandy slopes to the rocky beach and struck out across the cold ocean to where the wolf boat was at anchor, torches burning bright and welcoming on prow and stern.
Spellbinder hauled her aboard, and flung a thick cloak around her. Dawn was breaking.
“Why do you send for us in such panic?” she asked.
“There is no time to lose. We sail south to break this alliance, and then we go after Belthis. We must act swiftly or the tide of chance will carry out opportunity away.”
Thirteen
“Most tools can never dictate the way they are used, or complain at what they are made to do. Some can. It is a foolish man who ignores their voice.”
The Books of Kharwhan
They sailed south, following the bird that winged lazily above them, guiding them to the place of landing. Spellbinder cursed the sluggish seas and the gentle winds, cried for power from the skies to drive them faster towards the shorts of Lorn. Raven and the others watched sea whipping past, saw the great sail stretched and billowing to capacity, and felt dizzy with the speed at which the wolf ship clipped the waves. But still Spellbinder, dank with sea spray, his black-clad figure tensely rooted by the prow, still he cried in anger that the elements should treat them so gently, and slow their progress so much.
The urgency filled all of Raven’s followers, until they too stood by the sea-rails, knuckles white as they gripped the wood, faces drawn and tense as they stared to the south, willing the great wastelands to appear across the horizon.
Belthis’s plan for the conquest and uniting of the Eastern lands had been swiftly and courageously effected. He had not used merely the weapons of war to bring the Altanate into his power, but had subtly played upon the fears and desires of the common people. M’rystal was doomed by the very fact that he stood between the soldiers and their families. And the common people would not rise up against Belthis because, if he put them down, they would not have their sons returned to them.
Simple though the psychological battled seemed, it was the most effective weapon that Belthis had ever wielded, sharp as a sword, bright as the sun, as painful as a wound to the stomach.
But Belthis, in his arrogance and haste, had overlooked a subtlety in the nature of man that would bring his downfall. He had united Lorn with the Conil Nachta in a tenuous and fragile alliance, with a goal of wealth and land that would overcome any and all thoughts of their homelands falling to M’rystal by way of revenge. Greed, Belthis reasoned, and the thought of wealth beyond the desert dreams of the tribal warriors, was a greater God than the gods of their birthplace. M’rystal’s sword, striking vengefully through the communities along the river Nachta, would cut less deeply now that hearts were filled with the promise of lands richer and greener than any the Nachta could support.
But in his lust for conquest, Belthis had overlooked the obvious.
Argor had once told Raven, Never ally with one who would rather see you dead than fighting alongside him. He will mistrust you as much as you mistrust him. Mistrust can turn a blade as surely as stone.
They sailed south, to turn blades.
When
seen from the highlands edging the Lorn desert, the Nachta river was an enormous silver ribbon, winding inland from the great ocean until its waters poured down falls and through gorges into the Lake of the Dead. Three fords bridged the river, which for most of its length was unpassable. Huge forts guarded those crossings on both sides.
The river was a barrier between peoples, a wall that separated two cultures, two environments. It was a wall that made hate tolerable, for it made war difficult. For generations the fierce, dark-haired tribes of the Conil Nachta had glared from their wooden forts and mountain strongholds, at the billowing tent communities of the Sons of Lorn. For the same length of time the Sons of Lorn, clothed in loose robes and with their faces hidden behind bizarre cloth and metal masks, had stared from their sand burrows and flapping tents at the cloud-covered land of the head-hunters to their south.
The greenness, and the magic valleys of the Nachta, called to the heat-worn, sand-scarred nomads of Lorn. The bizarre fruits and luxurious landscapes of Lorn were a perpetual enticement to the warriors of the Conil Nachta. Each nation was bordered by a wasteland that confined them and contained them. They had only the enchantment of the other side of the river to set their eyes upon.
Along the coast of Lorn, south of the desert and stretching as far as the wide Nachta estuary, were great cities, brick and mortar towering high above the cliffs and coastal plains. Here lived the elite of Lorn, in vast, sprawling villas, marble-decked and water-fringed. They played games of war, and trained themselves in the use of exotic weapons. Only in the privacy of their own homes did they remove the masks they wore.
From one such city, Cru’artaa Jade Eyes governed Lorn, and from this same city he had agreed to the alliance with Nachta, for he was a greedy man and had long regarded hungrily the City States to the south. He knew, as all knew, that when the eastern nations were united, the City States could not stand before their armies. The pickings would be richer and sweeter than any gleaned from the raids into the hilly lands of Nachta.
A Time of Ghosts Page 17
